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Quickstart: Sign in users and call the Microsoft Graph API from a Node.js web app

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This quickstart uses a sample Node.js web app to show you how to sign in users by using the authorization code flow and call the Microsoft Graph API. The sample uses MSAL Node to handle authentication.

Prerequisites

Register the application and record identifiers

To complete registration, provide the application a name and specify the supported account types. Once registered, the application Overview pane displays the identifiers needed in the application source code.

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center.

  2. If you have access to multiple tenants, use the Settings icon in the top menu to switch to the tenant in which you want to register the application from the Directories + subscriptions menu.

  3. Browse to Identity > Applications > App registrations, select New registration.

  4. Enter a Name for the application, such as identity-client-web-app.

  5. For Supported account types, select Accounts in this organizational directory only. For information on different account types, select the Help me choose option.

  6. Select Register.

    Screenshot that shows how to enter a name and select the account type in the Microsoft Entra admin center.

  7. The application's Overview pane is displayed when registration is complete. Record the Directory (tenant) ID and the Application (client) ID to be used in your application source code.

    Screenshot that shows the identifier values on the overview page on the Microsoft Entra admin center.

    Note

    The Supported account types can be changed by referring to Modify the accounts supported by an application.

Add a platform redirect URI and create a client secret

To specify your app type to your app registration, follow these steps:

  1. Under Manage, select Authentication.
  2. On the Platform configurations page, select Add a platform, and then select Web option.
  3. For the Redirect URIs enter http://localhost:3000/auth/redirect.
  4. Under Front-channel logout URL, enter https://localhost:5001/signout-callback-oidc for signing out.
  5. Select Configure to save your changes.
  6. Under Manage, select Certificates & secrets > Client secrets > New client secret. Choose a description, and then select Add.
  7. Note the value of Client secret for later use. This value is only displayed once.

Clone or download the sample application

To obtain the sample application, you can either clone it from GitHub or download it as a .zip file.

  • To clone the sample, open a command prompt and navigate to where you wish to create the project, and enter the following command:

    git clone https://github.com/Azure-Samples/ms-identity-node.git

  • Download the .zip file. Extract it to a file path where the length of the name is fewer than 260 characters.

Configure the project

Extract the project, open the ms-identity-node-main folder, and then open the .env file under the App folder. Replace the values above as follows:

Variable Description Example(s)
Enter_the_Cloud_Instance_Id_Here The Azure cloud instance in which your application is registered https://login.microsoftonline.com/ (include the trailing forward-slash)
Enter_the_Tenant_Info_here Tenant ID or Primary domain contoso.microsoft.com or aaaabbbb-0000-cccc-1111-dddd2222eeee
Enter_the_Application_Id_Here Client ID of the application you registered 00001111-aaaa-2222-bbbb-3333cccc4444
Enter_the_Client_Secret_Here Client secret of the application you registered A1b-C2d_E3f.H4i,J5k?L6m!N7o-P8q_R9s.T0u
Enter_the_Graph_Endpoint_Here The Microsoft Graph API cloud instance that your app will call https://graph.microsoft.com/ (include the trailing forward-slash)
Enter_the_Express_Session_Secret_Here A random string of characters used to sign the Express session cookie A1b-C2d_E3f.H4...

Your file should look similar to below:

CLOUD_INSTANCE=https://login.microsoftonline.com/
TENANT_ID=aaaabbbb-0000-cccc-1111-dddd2222eeee
CLIENT_ID=00001111-aaaa-2222-bbbb-3333cccc4444
CLIENT_SECRET=A1b-C2d_E3f.H4...

REDIRECT_URI=http://localhost:3000/auth/redirect
POST_LOGOUT_REDIRECT_URI=http://localhost:3000

GRAPH_API_ENDPOINT=https://graph.microsoft.com/

EXPRESS_SESSION_SECRET=6DP6v09eLiW7f1E65B8k

Run the application and sign in

Run the project by using Node.js.

  1. To start the server, run the following commands from within the project directory:

    cd App
npm install
npm start

  2. Go to http://localhost:3000/.

  3. Select Sign in to start the sign-in process.

    The first time you sign in, you're prompted to provide your consent to allow the application to sign you in and access your profile. After you're signed in successfully, you'll be redirected back to the application home page.

More information

How the sample works

The sample hosts a web server on localhost, port 3000. When a web browser accesses this address, the app renders the home page. Once the user selects Sign in, the app redirects the browser to Microsoft Entra sign-in screen, via the URL generated by the MSAL Node library. After user consents, the browser redirects the user back to the application home page, along with an ID and access token.

MSAL Node

The MSAL Node library signs in users and requests the tokens that are used to access an API that's protected by Microsoft identity platform. You can download the latest version by using the Node.js Package Manager (npm):

npm install @azure/msal-node

Next step

Learn more by building an ASP.NET Core web app that signs in users in the following multi-part tutorial series:

Tutorial: Web app that signs in users